Americans Score 60 Out of 100 on Longevity Readiness, and Care Is the Weak Spot

Americans scored 60 out of 100 on the new Longevity Preparedness Index — a grade one executive calls "a solid D" — and the weakest of the index's eight areas is care, at 43. The index, built by MIT's AgeLab and insurer John Hancock Financial, was shared exclusively with Fortune ahead of its release, and its takeaway is blunt: the country isn't ready for how long it's about to live.

Joe Coughlin, who founded MIT's AgeLab in 1999, thinks even the so-called Great Wealth Transfer from Baby Boomers will prove slippery. Estimates for the handoff range from $36 trillion to $124 trillion — a spread he chuckled at in a recent interview with Fortune.

What does longer life change for the money?

Timing. The standard narrative assumes retirement at 65 followed by a short stretch of life, but Wayne Park, who runs Manulife's U.S. retirement business at John Hancock's parent, said people might live to 130 someday. A 2021 University of Washington study put a 13% chance that at least one person in the 13 countries analyzed reaches 130 by 2100, and Harvard's David Sinclair has suggested 150 isn't outlandish.

John Hancock CEO Brooks Tingle noted the retirement age of 65 "was sort of dreamt up … when people lived to 47." Germany lowered its pension eligibility age from 70 to 65 in 1916, and the U.S. adopted 65 for Social Security in 1935.

Park called 65 "sort of an artificial milestone" and said the Great Wealth Transfer may be "overemphasized." The facts, he said, are that "one transfers first to the spouse typically." Longer lives stretch the process across what could be decades. Coughlin noted women tend to partner with older men and typically enter a second retirement after a husband dies. "For all the kids waiting for that great check in the sky," he said, "don't hold your breath."

New life stages, new pressures

Coughlin, author of the 2017 book The Longevity Economy, stressed the index is not a health survey. "Health and wealth are the bookends of a longer, better life," he said. "But in between, where are you going to live? What are you going to do? What are the transitions?" He called the LPI "the first roadmap to try to sketch out what is that terra incognita out there of living longer, better."

The median first-time homebuyer hit a record age of 40 in the National Association of Realtors' 2025 survey. "We're creating new life stages," Coughlin said, "or we're extending life stages that used to be done in short order." He's writing a book about four retirements within retirement, with the first stage being managing ambiguity — working out what retirement means and whether to keep working part time.

For Park, longer life means more years of income to fund, straining both Social Security and personal savings. "There's going to be challenges because of the way our public system is set up," he said.

Whose fault is the generation gap?

"The real generation gap is about expectations," Coughlin said. "Not only do expect to live longer, but they expect to live better." He argued millennials inherited the boomers' reputation without their advantages — "You poor guys are getting treated the way the boomers did" — and called Gen Z another potential "Greatest Generation." "They're not snowflakes. They're snowballs," he said, noting their rational distrust of institutions and their habit of building a second income. One told him they needed a plan B "because I'm not sure that my employer is going to be there for me."

He wasn't all sunshine: loneliness peaks between 18 and 25, the quarter-life crisis is real, and his wellbeing data shows satisfaction falling through the 30s and 40s, bottoming out between roughly 47 and 50.

The care question nobody wants to raise

Park urged caution on the 130-year scenario, citing the pace of GLP-1 drugs and AI: "The question is, are those 130 years going to be in? You're going to be thriving for most of those 130 years, versus what it could be." On care, the research suggests the job usually falls to the eldest daughter, often without her knowing — AgeLab research found 75% of unpaid caregivers are women, many of them family.

Tingle's advice: "You've got to be realistic. Yeah, you've got to prepare, you've got to plan, but it presents a tremendous opportunity." Park's own attempt to discuss his care with his daughter got derailed when she announced a boyfriend. His closing pitch: "You're going to have an awkward conversation on Thanksgiving anyway. This is a really important one." For planners and families alike, that conversation — not the 65th birthday — is where longevity readiness actually starts.